With Love To The Indian Grandparents Visiting the US – Varalotti In The US 7

Hi Gayathri,

Yours is what I'll call a soulful response to what I have posted. You have rightly described the delicate feelings of a girl's parents visiting her marital home. In India this relationship has been made complicated by customs, practices and what people have been saying behind our backs.

When I expect my wife to treat my mother as her mother, the least I should do is reciprocate the same feelings to her mother. A girl's position is worse because she has to revere her mil as her mother. But a man has choices. That's an inequity.

Indian grandparents gratuituously babysitting their grandchildren is already a cliche. I heard this from an old lady who is living in Adyar. When her son got a job in the US, she wanted to go to US. Her son who was newly married brutally refused her request.

But when a child was born to the son, he came to India with his family for the vacation and begged his mother to come to the US with him. The lady's experiences were horrible. They did not take her out. She was confined to the house 24 by 7. Baby sitting and cooking throughout the day. Added to that the dil hosted a lot of parties during the weekends during her mil's stay. So weekend meant only extra strain for the poor, old lady.

When her visa period ended and her son wanted to extend that she put her foot down and told him that she was going back to India. Period. She told on dil's face that that was her last visit to the US.

Stairs, winter - they could be quite a menace.

A suggestion to Indians buying/renting house in the US. Please ensure that there is at least one bedroom and bathroom at the ground level. A friend I know has a house which has no bedroom in the ground floor. His parents opted to sleep on the sofa than take the trouble of climbing the stairs.

I thank you once again, Gayathri, for the wonderful response.

regards,

 

Dear Sundari,

thanks.

my suggestion was to the Indian grandparents not to take up cooking on landing in the US soil. The visitors should cook for fun and not as a sense of duty.

Cooking in the US is a different story altogether. In the software territory, mainly California, where both the man and the women are working, normally there are some cooks (mostly north Indian) who come and cook for the whole week on Sunday. Then you need to just take it out from the fridge, microwave it and eat it. There are many who cook sambar, rasam, vathakuzhambu for 3 or 4 days at a stretch and reheat it when necessary.

I cant blame them, Sundari. You have to just see that to believe how busy a working woman gets early in the morning. The kids have to be driven to school, she has to go to office. Her husband is getting ready.


They all have cereals for breakfast, sandwiches for dinner and some cooked food in the night.

Medical system in the US is pretty screwed up thanks to the Insurance companies and malpractice insurance. That's why India was weary of allowing foreign insurance companies. Right now we find that the family doctor, the friendly neighbourhood doctor is becoming an endangered specie.

An average American now pays almost 8 times what others pay for his medical treatment. Medical system in the US is one of the worst man-made blunders. Nothing short of dynamiting the system and starting from the scratch again will work.

Thanks Sundari for the response,
Love,
sridhar

 

Dear Subbu,

I admire your patriotism and appreciate your sentiments. But at the same time we should not be blind to certain very good aspects of American life.
First here in the US labour, work is respected much more than the things. I went to a garage sale today. I could see DVD players on sale for 5$, a huge chair very comfortable, for just 1 $, jackets for 5$. But if you want somebody to carry these things to your car, you may have to pay more than 10$. You see that way they respect labour.

Second there is almost a brutal recognition for merit and intelligence. If you do well you are sure to come up and that too very fast.

I met a 27 year old guy from India, who had done his doctorate in North Carollina University. He works for Microsoft. He is held in high esteem as a research scholar, a rare talent and all. He travels around the world, works on a flexi time basis. I am sure such a guy if he works for an Indian University, will be just a professor getting just enough money for his existence and would be facing a lot of politics from his less-talented senior professors.

Like you my roots are very deep in India. But I also love what is good about this great country. In fact the ability to see the good in others is the distinguishing mark of Indian culture, which we should never lose.

Thanks for the post, Subbu. I think this is your first post in my forum. Looking forward to see more of you in future.
regards,
sridhar

 

A Suggestion to the Indian-Americans!

Most Gracious ILites,

I should thank Blondie for her beautiful posts in this forum. I have been thinking hard on the matter conveyed in both of her posts. The son who had to spend a fortune because his mother was quite careless about her health and never bothered to buy insurance. The young student who met with an accident and the pathetic appeal made by his brother!

Life is full of risks. However careful you may be, certain things are bound to happen. When you are in India it is a different story. I have gone through tough times. Believe me in India, it is easy to pull through. But not here in the US.

My heart bleeds when I hear about the guy who spent 155000 dollars for his mother's treatment. That's about Rs.62 lakhs, more than the life time savings of many Indians. Thats the cost of about 12 mid-sized brand new cars in India, the cost of a luxury Apartment in the outskirts of Chennai.

I suggest that the Indians living in a locality should form an informal network. Every one in the network should set aside some money, as small as ten dollars and as much as they can afford, and keep it in a bank account, preferably separate from the rest of their accounts. When someone in the network has a problem - an accident, or parent's illness or whatever- he or she should appeal to others in the network. The network can have some moderators like we have in the IL. These people can check the details and tell everyone in the network that this is a fit case to help. Everyone chips in the amount he or she considers fit from the amount set aside. This is the underlying principle of insurance. But this needs to be done in an informal basis. Dont advertise the network. Don't even name that. And dont collect money in advance and pool it. That will invite all types of trouble.
With emails and Internet you can build a large network of people.

I heard this idea from a North Indian businessman. He told me that he belongs to a network of businessmen in his community somewhere in Gujarat. If one businessman becomes bankrupt, then someone from the network studies his problems and if they are satisfied that he is not to be blamed for his failure, then everyone gives money to him, just like that. That money is to be returned to the donors if this man comes up again in life. He told me literally hundreds of businessmen have been saved by this unique system.

Why can't we have such a system to help ourselves?

Remember doing this is both an act of charity and an act of self-interest.

My idea is at a crude stage. You may think over it and refine it. Let me hear your views.

Thanks, Blondie, for inspiring this.

Love,

 

When I grew up, I came across a few 'Payana Kathaigal' by Manian collected from Vikatan and hard-bound and used to love them. I know that your purpose here is not travel, but being an excellent narrator, could you please attempt something like that?
Thanks Gayathri for the suggestion and for the kind words. Yes I do have something of that in my mind. But I will be just a co-author for the book. All these gracious ILites like you will be my co-authors, for you have contributed much more than I have. I am playing the role of a facilitator here.

And Gayathri your mentioning about the relationship between the parents themselves, the love the children have for their parents play a major role in determining the quality of the stay.

In the 150000 $ medical expenses episode so beautifully narrated by Blondie, we need to observe one more thing. The son or his sister should have taken some time to explain to the woman in question the importance of a medical check-up, the importance of taking medicines and the financial consequences of falling sick in the US. Had the old lady known that her medical condition would wipe the life-time savings of her son, she would surely have taken more care. I am sure the lady is going to be eaten by feelings of guilt for the rest of her life. So I would suggest that it is the duty of the son/daughter living in the US to make the visiting parents emotionally understand the consequences of not having a medical check-up or a medical insurance.

I observed a subtle difference between a father/fil and a mother/mil visiting the US. In India especially in the generation to which the grandparents belong the man virtually does no work. He gets up in the morning, takes the newspaper and is immersed in it. He just lifts his head above the paper and commands his wife, "Hey, what about my morning coffee?"
And he comes of his bath and yells at his wife, "Is not my breakfast ready yet?" And after breakfast he just walks away leaving his plates there in the table. The woman has to do all the work.

Here in the US the old man cannot do that. He sees his son wiping the table, cleaning the plates, loading the dishwasher, washing the clothes and doing all the chores. So he has to go get his coffee. At times he has to make it all by himself.

So one more suggestion to the grandfather visiting the US: please try to share some of the chores with your wife at least a month or two before you travel to US.

The lady of the house is used to doing all the work there. She can easily adjust to the atmosphere here.

I should admit here that the two Gayathris who responded to this thread have done a wonderful job.
regards,

 

To Sunkan!

Dear Sundari,

Just now I remembered that I had not answered your question about the rain in Seattle. You see that Seattle is on the rainyside of a mountain range. The mountain blocks the clouds and ensures rains for most part of the year.

I landed here on August 27th and the climate all along has been very warm and sunny. But from two weeks ago the climate became gradually colder. Right now it has been drizzling.

I am sitting with my laptop in the dining room of my host. And right before me is a large window which opens into their garden. I can see the continuous drizzle which has given a lovable shine to the leaves in the trees and plants. Soon the leaves will turn reddish brown and will start to fall. (That's why they call the period starting from September 1st Week, The Fall)

Yes, it does rain most of the time now. But it is not a hassle. As you travel only in cars and the roads are equipped to handle even much heavier rains.

They say that winter will be very severe with temperature falling to almost 0 degrees, the official freezing point. So the roads will be covered by sheet ice. The rains will become snowfall. My host tells me that during last winter, on a particular day when there was a heavy snowfall, it took him five and a half hours to come home from office, a ride which on a normal day takes only 25 minutes.

regards,

 

Oh, my dear, dear Subbu,

If only we have a lot of people who share your love for Mother India, we would have been a superpower longback.

And Subbu, you made me think on the subject. Let's take the case of the 27 year old Ph.D I mentioned in my post. Here in the US, in Microsoft, his potential is being used to the fullest. He is now a happy and a fulfilled man. You should see him to believe his happiness. Being in the R&D Dept of Microsoft he travels to as far as Norway, Brazil and Africa as part of his job. His talents are recognised world-wide.

But if this guy works for let's say Madras University, I am sure, he will not be as happy as he is now. But more importantly hardly 10% of his potential would have been used.

Now tell me Subbu, from his angle. Would he do better to live a fufilled life in the US or live a frustrated life in India? And you said our country is "Mother India". Right? A mother would love her children to be happy wherever they are, rather than forcing them to live with her and make them sad.

At the same time I am aware of the new trend among people like this Ph.D guy. After they have amassed enough wealth they come back to India to give something back to Mother India. But invariably they are frustrated by the bureaucracy and politics.

I met a fantastic guy in Madurai. He was a Director of the MBA Department of a local college. He had been working in the US, Singapore and other places. But he loved India and he loved teaching. So he gave up his job and opted to work as a teacher at about 1/100th of his last drawn salary. He was very happy for a while. The students found him interesting. But after a while politics started to play. And one year later he left his job, a disillusioned man. He has gone back to Singapore.

The great scientist Subramanyam Chandrasekhar wanted to come back to India back in the 70s. He made a visit to Delhi and stayed there for a month. But he found the conditions stifling. He went back to Chicago where in 1983 he won the Nobel Prize.

Subbu, as the world is growing and our minds are expanding we realise that the lines that divide one country from the other are lines of selfishness and possessiveness drawn by the zealots who lived in a less-develooped time. And we as Indians were the first to recognise this when we said, "Yaadhum Oore Yaavarum Kelir."
The whole world is our place and all the people, our kin.

Indians living in the US should have their roots in the Indian culture. Which I am sure they have. My host's sons chant vedas every day. Every Friday they have a Lakshmi Pooja. They are Indians, living in the US. I want no more than this, Subbu.
Thanks for making me think.
regards,